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Da on hi in his voice, in the depths of his eyes

She made a soft sound low in her throat

"Brenna, this isn't a good idea"

She looked up at him, mute

"Your first time," Roshan said, his voice thick "It should be with your husband"

He had lived in the h to kno archaic and trite those words sounded In tins day and age, ether, openly and sha of the church, yet he was still a product of his upbringing, taught since childhood that a e was a sin In the years since he had been a vampire, it was not advice to which he had always adhered He was a vampire, not a in On those occasions when he had sought out female companionship, he had made sure the woman knew the score, and then he hadof what passed between them

"I want no husband," Brenna retorted

"No?"

She shook her head "Marriage has brought nothing but misery to the women in my family"

He looked at her, waiting for an explanation

With a sigh, she sat down on the sofa "My great-grandfather betrayed randfather vowed to loveas he lived, but after ten years of ue with the devil It was nonsense, of course None of the woick or invoked any of the dark arts My own father abandoned hter was a witch"

Roshan sat down at the other end of the sofa "I take it there are no male witches in your fahter"

"So," he said slowly, "you don't want a husband, but you want uess you're not as old-fashioned as I thought," he "

"I may not want a husband," she said candidly "But I do want a child Your child"

Few things had taken hiht Zerena had bestowed the Dark Gift upon hiht him totally unprepared For a moment, he pictured Atiyana in his mind's eye, her face pale, her eyes empty of life, the sheet beneath her stained with blood He recalled picking up the tiny infant she had expelled from her womb moments before she died

"I' the questions he saw rising in her eyes "I can't create life, Brenna I can only sustain my own, such as it is"

"I am sorry," she said quietly "I did not know"

For aher the truth Had he been a less honorable man, he could have taken her to his bed, ht, let her believe that he could give her the child she yearned for

"I'm sorry, too," he replied There was hardly a day that went by that he didn't think of his son Even after all these years, the memory of the infant's death was still painful His son Such a tiny scrap of humanity, dead before it had been born, and all Roshan's hopes and dreaain, tension flowed between them